U.S. ready to act in Syria if attacks continue

The United States is “prepared to act if we must” to stop indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Syria, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Monday as she circulated a new draft resolution demanding an immediate cease fire.

Addressing the Security Council 16 days after it passed a resolution demanding a cease fire that largely has failed to stop the bombing or allow humanitarian access, Ms. Haley compared the situation today to last year when the United States launched airstrikes against a Syrian military base after a deadly chemical weapons attack.

“When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action,” Ms. Haley said.

This is one of those times, she added.

“We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must,” she said. “It is not a path we prefer. But it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again.”

French President Emmanuel Macron also threatened targeted strikes in Syria, telling reporters at a news conference in India that France would retaliate if it found “irrefutable evidence” chemical weapons had been used to kill civilians.

Earlier in the Security Council, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said the bombing and bloodshed in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta, a rebel stronghold, had increased since the council called for a cease fire. Only a limited number of convoys delivering medical supplies and food have succeeded in reaching civilians — and Syrian government forces confiscated most of the equipment on one load, he said. And not a single critically ill person has been evacuated.

Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Jaafari, said terrorists had conducted chemical attacks on civilians and staged it to make it look like the Syrian military was to blame.